How Our Pain Drives Us To Seek HIM

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This Old Bod’ Just Ain’t What It Used To Be

There’s an old folk song called “The Old Gray Mare” which goes on to say “ain’t what she used to be.” Well, that appeared to be describing me all of a sudden, and I just couldn’t figure out why in the world all these things were happening now – I mean after all, the Lord surely knew that I had way too much to do at the moment!

In my last post Checking Out Dorm Rooms, I wrote about finding a lump on my neck before we dashed down to Arizona to check out potential living arrangements for Jeffrey once he started college.

Well we were back home now, and I couldn’t put it off any longer. The silly lump on my neck just didn’t seem to be going away, and appeared to be getting larger. I knew I better go and get it checked out so I made an appointment with my doctor – plus I was past due for my yearly check-up anyway.

I was sitting in the examining room waiting, and when the doctor opened the door she glanced at the lump on my neck and said:

Wow, that thing is HUGE!!!

Gee, thanks.

Then she started with all the questions:

Well, has there been anything new going on since your last visit? Have you been overly tired? Fatigued? Stressed?

Inside I was screaming: Well, DUH!!!

So I started explaining all of what had been going on with trying to get Jeffrey figured out for college; and then I casually mentioned that it was strange I also had started having a few monthly cycles again during the past couple of months.

She stopped her interrogation cold-turkey, and as she rustled through my chart said:

It has been over a year – and now you’ve started having them again?

Well, yes.

She started kindly berating me for not calling her immediately when they had started happening, telling me that this was not a normal thing. Then she had her nurse call and schedule ultrasounds for both the lump on my neck and my uterus to find out what was going on.

Whoa – I couldn’t believe all this was happening…

I went home that day and told Gary everything, and as usual he stayed very calm.

The ultrasounds were scheduled for the next day, and that night I laid there awake thinking about the tests. The neck ultrasound didn’t frighten me in the least – what I was stressing about was the ultrasound which was scheduled for my uterus.

The thoughts started swirling in my head about how extremely embarrassing it would be to have a male technician running the test.

“Oh, Lord…”

But of course I had again forgotten the Scripture which tells us to be anxious for nothing (Phil. 4:6).

The next day I showed up for the ultrasounds, and yes, I was still freaking out.

I got called into the exam room, and then all of a sudden in came the female technician.

YAHOO!!!

As she did the exam I started chatting nervously (very common for me), about all sorts of mindless stuff, and then the technician shared that normally that was her day off, but she was called in at the last minute!

Of course I knew deep in my heart that the Lord was blessing me, gently reminding me that He knows all of what’s going on, and He cares more than I can imagine.

The next day my doctor called me and said that the lump in my neck was a nodule on my thyroid, but that was all she could tell me about that. She said a biopsy was needed to find out exactly what was causing it to grow. A specialist would be calling me soon to schedule the biopsy.

She also told me that the pelvic exam showed a polyp in my endometrium (of course I had no idea what on earth that was), and that I needed to go to a gynecological specialist to get a biopsy done on that.